Audacity: process audio recording

Question

I got an audio file and it was recorded too close to the mic, I can listen to some vibrations at the end of the words and with the 's'. I want to fix it using Audacity. What should I do?

Answer 1

It's been a while sense I messed with this, but try compressing/normalizing the audio stream (should be an option in the Effect menu). That helps take peaks off the sound (like those that would come from air suddenly being blown into the mike or too loud spikes on some words). How much or how little you use will be up to you to play with.

Compressing clips the peaks after an allowed attack time and Normalizing brings up the rest if I remember correctly.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

Along with compressing/normalizing, you can benefit from "de-essing". If I remember correctly, Audacity doesn't have a built-in de-esser, but you can mitgate the effect with equalization and/or Low-Pass filters.